1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network system and a proxy response method therefor, a network device, an information processing device, and control methods therefor, and a storage medium, and particularly to a network technique in which a network device that provides a web service on a LAN causes an information processing device on the Internet to execute the web services on behalf of the network device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of image processing devices, such as a multifunction peripheral, are configured to be capable of communicating with information processing devices, such as PCs on a network, as network devices, and provide various kinds of web services including remote user interface, printing, and scanning, for the devices. The remote user interface enables a user to access from a PC on the network to access a network device, and view information, such as registration and jobs, stored in the network device.
Further, some of the network devices having the function of providing web services have a power saving function for shifting to a sleep (reduced power consumption) state when not in use, so as to reduce power consumption. Further, there is a network device having a proxy response function that responds to an access received from a terminal, using a network interface card (NIC) alone, when in the sleep state. In this case, the proxy response that returns an automatic response using a simple filter cannot respond to web service requests.
Further, there has been proposed a network system in which a proxy response server is installed on the same LAN to which first and second clients are connected, and maintains the sleep state of the first client (see e.g. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-165419). This proxy response server stores data items from the second client received by the first client and response messages to the received data items from the first client in a database within its own device, and monitors each received data items addressed from the second client to the first client. Then, when data which matches a received data item exists in the database, the proxy response server responds to the second client by one of the response messages associated with the received data item, on behalf of the first client.
However, in a device which provides web services, when a web service request is received from a client on the network during the sleep state, it is necessary for the device to return to the standby state from the sleep state to respond to the request.
Further, according to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-165419, when the proxy response server responds on behalf of the first client while maintaining the sleep state of the first client, it is necessary for the proxy response server to monitor each message addressed to the first client. Further, the proxy response is realized by the proxy response server monitoring packet data addressed to the first client, and hence it is necessary for the first client and the proxy response server to be installed on the same subnet.